Jamaican Pumpkin Soup

Picked up a chunk of Jamaican Pumpkin at the market and decided to do a soup. Found a recipe on line that was quite similar to squash soup using onions, garlic, bay leaf, thyme as well as a Scotch Bonnet pepper. Now I am more than a little leary of this pepper, plus I did not have any, so I substituted a Habanero pepper that I had in my garden. This pumpkin, which is obviously a type of squash, is very bright orange even after being cooked. Bit stringy, but because quite smooth when I put everything through the blender. I did remove the pepper before blending. Nice bite, and lovely flavour. Colour is very strong. Great winter soup. Warms one up both with the heat, and the sunny colour.

Baked Lemon Pudding

Rooting through my vegetable drawer, I found a couple of lemon that had been used for rind, and were now getting to look less than appetizing, at least on the outside. So what to make? Looking through old cookbooks, I came across a recipe in my Fannie Farmer Cookbook for a Baked Lemon Pudding. Just 3 eggs, plus 3/4 cup of sugar, lemon juice and tablespoon of rind plus 1 1/2 tbsp flour. I was able to scrape enough rind off the two lemon to make a tablespoon.  Easy. Bake in oven in water bath.

Result was a lovely thin moist cake like crust on top of a silky smooth sauce like pudding with a light lemon flavour. Quite nice. I will do this again.

Phipps Famous Shortbread

Years ago there was a bakery in Toronto that specialized in shortbread, and one time The Star ( I believe) published a recipe for their Famous Shortbread. I tried it and loved it because it had a nuttiness to it, because the recipe required roasting the flour under the broiler before using it. Quite different. So far, I've never seen another recipe like that. In any event, I had not made this type for many years and when I tried to find the clipping in my recipe binder, no luck. So I went on line and lo and behold a recipe, quite like how I remembered it.

Made it yesterday. Quite nostalgic, crumbly  and rich, since it uses a pound of butter as well as fruit sugar and rice flour.

Corn, Bacon and Ham Chowder

One leek, couple of potatoes and a piece of left over ham. What better than a chowder for a winter night. Added some celery and corn and lots of seasoning. Whir with the hand blender to thicken. Added a small amount of cream at the end and served with the saffron buns. Very good and satisfying meal.

Coconut Black Rice Pudding

I discovered I had a container with some Thai black rice, so lets make a pudding. Found a recipe using coconut milk. Rather easy. Cook rice in water then add coconut milk and sugar and cook again until thick.

It was OK but nothing special. Maybe my rice was too old. Oh well.

Saffron Buns

Since I am to bring bread of some kind to a Christmas lunch next week, I thought I would first try out a recipe for buns with saffron. It was from The Art of Baking Cookbook, which is published in Britain. I've had some problems with conversions before when using recipes published in Britain. Everything looked great with the dough. Lovely yellow colour and quite elastic from kneading, but then it would not rise much at all, even though I extended the time a lot. I finally baked them and this is the visual result.

They have a very distinct saffron flavour, which goes quite nicely with soup, but the texture is a bit heavy and stiff. I might try this again.

Cauliflower Soup with Garam Masala

What to do with cauliflower. Always one of the more boring vegetables I feel, but it does provide some variety, and others like it. So now what to do with the remainder. Soup! I experimented with the basic recipe for cauliflower soup by adding some Garam Masala seasoning. Turned out alright. Still a bit too bland for my taste. Colour a bit odd too.

Chicken Piri Piri Stir Fry

Piri Piri sauce has a Portuguese source by way of Africa, where apparantly it is very popular. It has chilies, lemon juice and a variety of spices that make it very piquant. I've used it as a marinade before, but this time I decided to try it as a stir fry sauce with chicken carrots and okra. Served over red rice, it was a hit.

Pinwheel Cookies

What is this holiday season without cookies!!! So a-baking I will go. First up pinwheel butter cookies. Strange as it may seem, I've never made this type of cookie before. Very easy, except for the rolling part. Crisp and not too sweet.

Now that I've got two oven thermometers its so much easier to control the results. Since I've discovered that my oven gauge is off by 50 to 60 degrees, its easier to produce cookies without burning some edges.

Fresh Ginger, Cardamom Baked Applesauce

Grey rainy day, and I need to do something that infuses the soul with warmth from my kitchen. So what is better than baked applesauce, but with a bit of a change. I've done baked applesauce in the crock pot a number of times, using honey and cinnamon, but this time I decided to add fresh grated ginger and cardamom as well as a bit of honey. Smell was divine. Flavour was quite homey with a bit of  spice. Next time I would add a bit more of each.

Baked Coconut Custard

I had a lot of coconut milk, and eggs in my fridge, so lets make a custard! I decided to try to alter a recipe for baked custard in the crockpot, by substituting the coconut milk (which was quite thick) for a portion of the required milk. Turned out to be a bit bland I thought. Plus I think I left it to cook too long, since there were some rubbery bits on the bottom. Doing some research in a How to Bake book I downloaded from the Prepared Pantry website, and reading up on using eggs in baking, too long can produce that result. I had thought it was the coconut milk. Will try this again but following the timing properly

Another aha. I bought an oven thermometer, and have discovered that the temperature gauge on my oven is out (higher) by as much at 50 degrees Farenheit. I always knew the temperature was out, but I did not think it was out by so much. Live and learn.

Beer Bread

New month is started, so a new type of bread. A bread made with 2 cups of beer intrigued me. It also had molasses to give it flavour and colour, and cornmeal to give it crunch. The dough was hard to work with and it took at lot more bread flour than noted in the recipe,  to be able to knead it properly, but I did it all by hand. Good thing this help my arthritis in my thumbs. Dark crust and deep warm brown interior. Lovely smell and lusty flavour. A hit. I made this batch with a light cloured beer. I'm sure it would taste quite different with a dark beer, or a fruit beer. May try that the next time. This recipe is also from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, and was called Trudi's bread but no one knows who Trudi is anymore.